Coordinated response needed to manage the health threats of climate change

Posted on November 1, 2010 by admin

Published on the AMA website 29 July 2010:

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said that Australia needs a National Strategy for Climate Change and Health to respond effectively to the health impacts of climate change.

Climate change will increase hurricane severity, causing mass casualties and other adverse health outcomes.

The 2009 State of the Climate report, released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirmed that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer in the past 50 years.

Dr Pesce said that climate change caused by global warming and greenhouse gas emissions poses significant challenges to the health and wellbeing of Australians.

“This report is further evidence that climate change is happening, that human activity is contributing to it, and that a coordinated health response is needed,” Dr Pesce said.

“Failure on the part of governments internationally to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to result in significant public health problems.

“Extreme weather events caused by global warming, such as storms, floods, heatwaves and fires, will all have serious long-term health implications for Australians, including increased vector-borne diseases, possible chemical exposures, and fatalities and injuries from extreme weather events.

“These health impacts will place increasing demand on the health system over time.

“Australians of all ages need to be confident that they can continue to receive good quality timely access to their doctor, and other health and medical professionals,” Dr Pesce said.

A National Strategy for Climate Change and Health would assist Governments and the broader community to plan for increased demands on health service infrastructure from extreme events and emerging health conditions due to climate change, and must incorporate:

Strong communication links between hospitals, major medical centres, and emergency response agencies to maximise the efficient use of health resources in extreme weather events;

Localised disaster management plans for specific geographical locations that model potential adverse health outcomes in those areas;

Nationally coordinated surveillance measures to prevent exotic disease vectors from becoming established in Australia; and

Development of effective interventions to address mental health issues arising from extreme events, including those involving mass casualties, and from longer-term changes, including drought.

Source: AMA

Your doctor would approve: €30.5 billion extra in avoided health care costs if Europe shifts emissions reduction target to 30 percent by 2020, according to a new analysis

Posted on October 16, 2010 by admin

Originally published at The Daily Climate

Upping the European Union’s emissions reduction target from 20 percent to 30 percent would reap €30.5 billion a year in health savings by 2020, according to a recent analysis by two European health groups.

Doctors have been too timid about highlighting the risks to human health from rises in greenhouse gases.
- Dr. Michael Wilks, Standing Committee of European Doctors

The savings come as the air pollutants associated with transportation and power generation – soot, smog and sulfur dioxide – decrease amid efforts to improve efficiency and abandon fossil fuels, according to the analysis.

If Europe were to move to a 30 percent target, the €30.5 billion in health costs avoided in 2020 would be in addition to the estimated €52 billion in public health benefits associated with the current 20 percent target, the study found.

Reducing European emissions 30 percent by 2020 - rather than 20 percent - would cost an additional €46 billion a year but would reap €30 billion in health savings, according to two health groups.

“Cleaner energy and cleaner air, associated with an immediate move to 30 percent domestic cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020, would go a long way to paying for itself in better health throughout Europe,” said Génon Jensen, executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance, one of the groups publishing the report. The other group was Health Care Without Harm.

The findings go beyond recent European Commission tallies on health benefits, which looked only at the loss of life associated with poor air quality. Tuesday’s report looks at the avoided costs of ill health – chronic bronchitis, cardiac and respiratory hospital admissions, asthma and other ailments associated with air pollution.

And the savings could be even higher, the authors note, as no study to date has explored the cost savings of avoiding the floods, heat waves and increases in infectious diseases predicted by climate models.

“Doctors have been too timid about highlighting the risks to human health from rises in greenhouse gases,” Dr. Michael Wilks, past president of the Committee of European Doctors, said in a statement.

Ministers from France, the United Kingdom and Germany have called on the European Union to unilaterally move its emissions target from 20 percent below 1990 levels to 30 percent, saying the jump is vital if the continent is to avoid losing the race to develop low-carbon technologies. EU member states are expected to consider the proposal next month.

The European Commission pegged the additional cost of a 30 percent target at €46 billion by 2020, or 0.3 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product.
In the United States, a proposal to cut emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels has stalled in the Senate, with little prospect of emerging this year.

Tropics in decline as natural resources exhausted at alarming rate – WWF 2010 Living Planet report

Posted on October 15, 2010 by admin

Gland, Switzerland – New analysis shows populations of tropical species are plummeting and humanity’s demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain, reveals the 2010 edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report – the leading survey of the planet’s health.

The Russian Leopard is critically endangered

The biennial report, produced in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, uses the global Living Planet Index as a measure of the health of almost 8,000 populations of more than 2,500 species. The global Index shows a decrease by 30 per cent since 1970, with the tropics hardest hit showing a 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

“There is an alarming rate of biodiversity loss in low-income, often tropical countries while the developed world is living in a false paradise, fuelled by excessive consumption and high carbon emissions,” said Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International.

While the report shows some promising recovery by species’ populations in temperate areas, thanks in part to greater conservation efforts and improvements in pollution and waste control, tracked populations of freshwater tropical species have fallen by nearly 70 per cent – greater than any species’ decline measured on land or in our oceans.

Not Another Nature Film from WWF on Vimeo.

“Species are the foundation of ecosystems,” said Jonathan Baillie, Conservation Programme Director with the Zoological Society of London. “Healthy ecosystems form the basis of all we have – lose them and we destroy our life support system.”

The Ecological Footprint, one of the indicators used in the report, shows that our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966 and we’re using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities. If we continue living beyond the Earth’s limits, by 2030 we’ll need the equivalent of two planets’ productive capacity to meet our annual demands.

“The report shows that continuing of the current consumption trends would lead us to the point of no return,” added Leape. “4.5 Earths would be required to support a global population living like an average resident of the of the US.”

Carbon is a major culprit in driving the planet to ecological overdraft. An alarming 11-fold increase in our carbon footprint over the last five decades means carbon now accounts for more than half the global Ecological Footprint.

The top 10 countries with the biggest Ecological Footprint per person are the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, United States, Estonia, Canada, Australia, Kuwait and Ireland.

The 31 OECD countries, which include the world’s richest economies, account for nearly 40 per cent of the global footprint. While there are twice as many people living in BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as there are in OECD countries, the report shows the current rate of per-person footprint of the BRIC countries puts them on a trajectory to overtake the OECD bloc if they follow same development path.

“Countries that maintain high levels of resource dependence are putting their own economies at risk,” said Mathis Wackernagel, President of the Global Footprint Network. “Those countries that are able to provide the highest quality of life on the lowest amount of ecological demand will not only serve the global interest, they will be the leaders in a resource-constrained world.”

New analysis in the report also shows that the steepest decline in biodiversity falls in low-income countries, with a nearly 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

The biggest footprint is found in high-income countries, on average five times that of low-income countries, which suggests unsustainable consumption in wealthier nations rests largely on depleting the natural resources of poorer, often still resource rich tropical countries.

The Living Planet Report also shows that a high footprint and high level of consumption, which often comes at the cost of others, is not reflected in a higher level of development. The UN Human Development Index, which looks at life expectancy, income and educational attainment, can be high in countries with moderate footprint.

The Report outlines solutions needed to ensure the Earth can sustain a global population projected to pass nine billion in 2050, and points to choices in diet and energy consumption as critical to reducing footprint, as well as improved efforts to value and invest in our natural capital.

“The challenge posed by the Living Planet Report is clear,” said Leape. “Somehow we need to find a way to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly prosperous population within the resources of this one planet. All of us have to find a way to make better choices in what we consume and how we produce and use energy.”

Limiting global warming may not limit heat wave risk

Posted on October 13, 2010 by admin

Aiming for an average global warming target of 2 degrees will still allow devastating heatwaves to occur.

Recent policy discussions on climate change have focused on limiting global average temperature increases. For instance, the European Union has set a goal of limiting global warming to 2°C. However, this goal represents a global average—regional and local temperature changes may vary, and substantial increases in regional extreme heat events could occur, possibly with serious consequences for some communities.

To help inform discussion, Clark et al. (2010) used an ensemble of climate simulations to study the potential increase in extreme heat waves under a scenario in which global warming is limited. They found that even if average warming is limited to 2°C, estimated increases in temperature during the hottest days range from 2°C to 6°C for parts of Europe, North America, and Asia. The researchers also investigate the sources of uncertainty in estimates of regional changes.

Citation: Clark, R. T., J. M. Murphy, and S. J. Brown (2010), Do global warming targets limit heatwave risk?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L17703, doi:10.1029/2010GL043898.

Climate change and the end of wilderness as we know it?

Posted on October 3, 2010 by admin

So what happens to threatened species conserved in nature reserves as global warming progresses, and preferred habitats move polewards and upwards? In short, some (perhaps many) will go extinct unless we can do something about it, said conservation expert and author Prof Tony Barnosky (U California -Berkeley) in an interview last year on Discovery News.

His book (called Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming) has a two-part message:

1. Nature has a new problem called global warming – the climate is warming too fast for nature to keep up in the ways she has been adapted to do.

2. As a result conservation biology will need new tools unless we want to see nature as we know it disappear.

What is wilderness and can we save it? Should we?

He says that the goals of conservation biology are to KEEP (protected areas protected), CONNECT (protected areas together with wildlife corridors) and CREATE (a new concept that recognizes that something different is required to save each of the three faces of nature: ecosystem services, biodiversity, and a feeling of wilderness).

There is a conflict between the need to intervene to save ecosystem services and biodiversity versus saving the feeling of wilderness. A large part of this conflict is due to fragmented habitats and small pieces of remnant wildness surrounded by human development – this prevents species from moving with their habitat, and brings animals into conflict with humans.

One possible solution is called assisted migration, where animals are transported from old habitats to more suitable ones. There are several potential issues including conflict with existing ecologies, invasive species, and cost among others.

Barnosky proposes a novel solution – two separate-but-equal kinds of nature reserves with ‘species reserves’ to receive moved species and ‘wildlands reserves’ to preserve a feeling of wilderness and also watch how Nature adapts to climate change without human intervention.

Prof Barnosky's new book

While he recognises that there letting nature take its course is probably cheaper, ‘the problem with doing that everywhere is that it means we are bound to lose many species from global warming, which we can’t really afford to do given that those losses will be thrown on top of the extinction perils we already recognize”.

Climatic conditions to shift one mile polewards on average every three years for the next 100 years

Recent research adds more weight and urgency to Barnosky’s message. A study reported at the end of last year finds that climates will shift polewards on average about one-third of a mile per year during the current century. Faster shifts are expected over flatter terrains like deserts flooded grasslands (up to six miles per year), while the shift will probably be slower in mountainous areas.

“All of us were quite astonished at that average speed,” said study author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences. “Of course we’re not trying to suggest that every spot on the planet is going to be experiencing a fixed rate of climate change, but the overall rate of temperature increase at any given point on the surface of the earth is really surprisingly high.”

The authors state that only 8% of protected areas are big enough to contain the expected change over the next century. “Our central conservation strategy is to draw static boundaries around an area we want to protect,” she said. “Unless species are far more adaptable than we ever imagined them to be, species are going to try to track their preferred climates, and they’re going to track them right out of the areas we’ve designed to protect them”, said study author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences.

Also check out The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One

The ‘dark side’ of climate change: Higher night temps.

Posted on September 25, 2010 by admin

Record-high temperatures throughout the East Coast this summer generated plenty of headlines. But one ominous facet of those heat waves never saw the light of day, so to speak.

Record-high nighttime temperatures, where the evenings did not cool as usual, were also common in 2010 and are a likely sign of trends to come, according to analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

According to the report, released Thursday, nighttime lows were the hottest on record at nearly one in four weather stations in the federal network this summer. Some 37 states recorded record-high nighttime temperatures, causing some 36 million people to either turn up the AC or ponder why they didn’t get that fan while it was in stock and on sale.

Experts say nighttime, rather than daytime, highs are what make heat waves so deadly, as hotter nights offer little chance for the day’s heat to dissipate, compounding the misery. Last year, a University of California study [pdf] found those heat waves hit minorities and the poor the hardest, a gap that will only widen unless policymakers intervene, the authors said.

Higher night-time temperatures hidden killer in heat waves.

Source: Daily Climate.org

Many Australian politicians don’t understand climate change science

Posted on September 17, 2010 by admin

An Australian survey released last month is less than reassuring that our politicians have their fingers on the pulse when it comes to understanding the risks and realities of climate change.

The survey of just over 300 pollies was conducted by the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. Some of the findings:

The good: Nearly 70 per cent believed human-induced climate change was happening and rated it as one of Australia’s most important challenges.

The bad: More than 40 per cent of those questioned said they believed it would be safe for the planet to warm by 4 degrees Celsius; Nearly 7 per cent believed a rise of up to 6 degrees would be safe.

The ugly: Green or Labour politicians were found to be better-informed and to be more pro-warming than Liberal/Nationals – Asked whether the planet was warming because of human activity producing greenhouse gases, 98 per cent of Greens said “yes” compared to 89 per cent of Labor, 57 per cent of non-aligned politicians and 38 per cent of Liberal-National politicians.

Despite the likely catastrophic results of climate change-induced warming of 6 degrees Centigrade, some Australian politicians think that would still be OK.

The rest: Seventy-five per cent of politicians believe the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by global warming, but only 55 per cent agree that ocean ecosystems are also threatened (of which the GBR is NOT a part?).

Only 56 per cent of surveyed politicians trusted the IPCC, although nearly 70 per cent said they were greatly influenced by what scientists said. Again it depended on political affiliation 98% of Greens said they were greatly influenced by scientists compared to 85 per cent of Labor politicians, 54 per cent of non-aligned politicians and 44 per cent of Liberal-National politicians.

Only 18 per cent of federal politicians responded to the survey. Of the entire survey group, 97 were Labor, 73 Liberal-National, 41 were Greens and the remaining 97 described themselves as non-aligned.

Links:

ABC website report.

Institute for Social Science Research (UQ) including link to survey findings pdf.

Build your own solar panels.

Image credit: flickr/suburbanbloke.

China hopes to eradicate schistosomiasis

Posted on September 16, 2010 by admin

China has a goal of eliminating schistosomiasis, a snail-borne parasitic disease that

China hopes to eradicate schistosomiasis

can be picked up by people and animals in infested rivers, lakes and soil, by 2015. The disease has already been eradicated in five of the 12 provinces, thanks to mass chemotherapy treatment, sanitation, replacement of water buffalo by machines, cleaning up the waterways and farmlands, and extremely sensitive diagnostic tools that can identify outbreaks to be brought under control quickly. But a new threat has emerged that is requiring new tools and research – climate change. READ MORE.

Schistosomiasis, neglected tropical diseases and climate change

Posted on September 16, 2010 by admin

Another recent podcast here from Australia’s ABC about Neglected Tropical Diseases. From their website:

More than 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest people are affected by a range of bacterial and worm based diseases including trachoma, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. They are just some of the 15 so-called neglected tropical diseases, which are diseases of poverty. But despite the numbers they affect, and their health and social consequences, these diseases attract less than one per cent of the total health funding for the developing world. The non-government organisation Sightsavers works in developing countries to overcome avoidable blindness and advocate for people with disabilities. Simon Bush outlines why the group is lobbying for NTDs to be incorporated into the eight Millennium Development Goals.

SO what’s the link to global warming you might ask? Take schistosomiasis for example.

Schistosomiasis Life Cycle

Also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis or snail fever, schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease caused by several species of tremotodes (“flukes”) – a parasitic worm of the genus Schistosoma.

Although it has a low mortality rate, schistosomiasis often is a chronic illness that can damage internal organs It impairs growth and cognitive development in children, and is the second most socioeconomically devastating parasitic disease after malaria.

The parasite has a complex life cycle (see diagram), part of which occurs within the bodies of freshwater snails. Humans become infected when they come in contact with contaminated water (often during swimming or bathing). The worms then mature, mate and release eggs from the bladder or bowel. When such contaminated effluent reaches freshwater, the life cycle begins again.

Several factors influence the risk to humans. The classic one is the availability of freshwater inhabited by snails, a factor that produced a massive increase in the number of cases in Egypt following the well-intentioned but poorly-thought-out mega-engineering projects of the latter part of the last century (such as the Aswan dam).

Possible changes due to global warming may also be important. One study published in the March 2007 issue of Advances in Climate Change Research suggests that increasing temperatures could increase numbers of both the Schistosome worm and its host the Oncomelania snail.

As a result of current warming, the researchers found an increase in the length of time environmental conditions were ideal for the growth of both snail and worm, putting people at risk for longer.

They also found that there had already been a northward migration of suitable growth conditions by up to two latitudes.

Temperature increases had shortened the length of the reproductive cycle for snails and worms, leading to an increase in the numbers of both.

China’s current projects to divert water from the south to the north could increase the spread of the disease – a process that might accelerate in the future due to climate change-driven drought.

Another Climate Change Denial Myth Answered – Antarctic Sea Ice Anomaly

Posted on September 10, 2010 by admin

Thanks to Al Gore’s blog for this one:

Thin Antractic sea ice will eventually melt as snow turns to rain due to global warming, putting at risk many of the area’s unique species.

Climate deniers often cite the expanding sea ice in the Southern Ocean as evidence that the climate crisis is not occurring. It turns out the opposite is true:

“Unlike the Arctic, where much of the sea ice is — at least for now — year-round, the Southern Ocean’s sea ice is thin and seasonal. And during the latter half of the 20th century, its winter surface area has increased. Climatologists say the expansion doesn’t change long-term projections of Antarctic melt, but skeptics have used it to attack their forecasts.”

Thin Antractic sea ice will eventually melt as snow turns to rain due to global warming, putting at risk many of the area's unique species.

“Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap,” read one Fox News story on the expansion.”

“Indeed, global warming appears to have been protective. By combining temperature and precipitation records with simulations of Southern Ocean climate, Curry and Liu linked the 20th-century warming of .36 degrees Fahrenheit in the Southern Ocean’s upper waters to increased regional snowfall. The finding makes intuitive sense: Rising temperatures increase the amount of moisture in the air, which eventually becomes snow. And for the last few decades, that snow kept surface waters from warming even more, added bulk to sea ice, and reflected sunlight.”

“But as the Antarctic continues to warm, Curry and Liu’s models show snow becoming rain (see image below), even as total precipitation rises (see image above). By the century’s end, they predict snowfall retreating to the Antarctic continent’s edge. The Southern Ocean at large will be rainy. Sea ice will contract. Continental ice will continue to melt.”

Original Source: Wired Science

Image Credit: Flickr / WisconsinKow

Climate Change HEALTH

News & views on climate, health and the environment by Dr Paul Roth

Coordinated response needed to manage the health threats of climate change

Your doctor would approve: €30.5 billion extra in avoided health care costs if Europe shifts emissions reduction target to 30 percent by 2020, according to a new analysis

Tropics in decline as natural resources exhausted at alarming rate – WWF 2010 Living Planet report

Limiting global warming may not limit heat wave risk

Climate change and the end of wilderness as we know it?

The ‘dark side’ of climate change: Higher night temps.

Many Australian politicians don’t understand climate change science

China hopes to eradicate schistosomiasis

Schistosomiasis, neglected tropical diseases and climate change

Another Climate Change Denial Myth Answered – Antarctic Sea Ice Anomaly